The Boy Who Changed the World by Andy Andrews is a colorful children’s book that talks about the impact even a small action can have on the world. The book is adapted from Andrews’ inspirational book The Butterfly Effect in order to bring it down to a child’s level of understanding. It is graphically and colorfully illustrated by Philip Hurst.

In order to illustrate his point the author tells the story of the development of a hybrid corn seed that has saved the lives of billions from starvation. He traces the events that led up to the development backward through time to the small act of a simple farmer who rescued a small boy from the hands of outlaws and brought him into his own family.

This story does a good job of showing how everything we do can have an impact. Every child needs to learn the lesson that they don’t have to be a president, or CEO, or Military Hero to change to world. They just need to be themselves and do what they can for others.

Have you noticed how common the common language has become? It seems that words are losing their impact. There are still people out there that can command language to do impactful works, but in general it seems as though many words have lost the rich meaning they once had.

Take the word awful for instance. You might hear someone say “that soup was awful”. The word used to have so much meaning though. Awful. Full of awe. “That sunrise this morning was awful.” There are so many other words out there to describe something as bad. Why did awful have to be changed?

How about provocative? These days you are most likely to hear the word used to describe the attire of a young lady who should probably be showing a little less skin. Again, let’s look at the root though. Provoke. To stir up. The ending -ive. Tending toward a specified action. So provocative should provoke us to action! Isn’t the oil slick in the gulf provocative? It should be!

And finally, how about careless. We use the word to refer to someone who is clumsy. How about someone who is a free spirit? Couldn’t they be described as careless? “In spite of the tragedy surrounding her, she was totally careless.”

Words can be so much more inspiring than they have come to be in this age of texting and tweeting. I’m a big advocate of keeping up with the times as evidenced by the fact that I’m even blogging. But let’s not lose site of the power that our words hold. Let’s all try and be more careless, provocative, and awful in our day to day lives. C-U-L8-R.